Desert Storm and Duct Tape

Our first day's drive toward home brought us to Tonopah, AZ, to the park where we had stayed on the way to California.  Quite a nice park, and a perfect distance for a day's drive from Riverside.  We had planned to make it to New Mexico on our second day out . . . in fact, we had planned to basically retrace our steps and stopping points from the trip out.  What we had NOT planned on was the dust storm that was blowing south of Phoenix all the way to Casa Grande (just north of Tucson).

See that car in front of us?  We couldn't either!

At first, the dust was just a nuisance, and we knew our gas mileage was suffering.  But soon, we heard a chattering from the back of the coach, and discovered that the bedroom window on the driver's side was flapping like an angry bird, and appeared about to take flight.  The latch had broken and the wind was about to rip the whole thing off.  We pulled off at the next exit, and Frank duct taped the thing down and we were on our way again.

Barely noticeable, and still intact

But, we weren't 10 miles down the road until there was loud thumping and vibration from the passenger side of Pooh.  At first, we thought we had blown a tire, but Linda looked out the window to discover that the awning was blowing loose, and the awning arms were beginning to separate and pull away from the rig.  Major problem, no doubt.

Miles and miles of wind and low visibility

Frank pulled to shoulder immediately and got out to inspect.   This was not a good situation.  Linda was still in the motorhome and listening to other items (like vent covers and the TV antenna) flapping and banging on the roof.  Soon we saw a couple of semi-trucks pull off to the side as well, with similar wind-related problems.   We were in the middle of a 50 mph dust storm in the Arizona desert.  Just ducky.  

Linda had to get out of the motorhome herself to help Frank . . . no easy task with the high wind blowing against the door.  She did panic, a bit.

Eventually, with some tense moments, Frank and Linda were able to get the now-shredded awning re-rolled up onto the side of the motorhome and the locks on it re-engaged.  (There are no pictures of this scene because it was too terrifying to contemplate letting go of anything we were holding on to, in order to try and focus a camera on the situation).

Everything looked well, and we pulled back onto the highway to continue.  We were not five miles down the road before the awning started acting up again.  This time, we were able to get to an exit before the thing pulled completely out.  We parked on the sheltered side of a Denny's restaurant, and rerolled the thing again.  This time Frank used his duct tape to tape the arms of the awning together so that the wind could not do further damage.

The gray of the duct tape coordinates nicely with the exterior graphics

It was a scary day.  We only made it to a campground just south of Tucson that night, and even that, just barely.  These incidents are like the horror stories we sometimes read about in our RV magazines; we never thought we might be in one ourselves.

Thank goodness for duct tape.

We will need a new fabric on the awning.